The first item in an AmQuip worker's tool box is a S.T.A.R.T. training course (Supervisor Training in Accident Reduction Techniques), in which employees learn the ethical, financial and legal implications of exercising poor safety measures—and, conversely, the expectations, personal accountability and peer coaching that characterize an effective safety culture.

All employees attend this course, which lasts four hours for executives and eight hours for all other employees—which can prove challenging when an operator has a four-hour job scheduled for that day. The operator receives supplemental instruction from a 36-minute safety video, which Hammons calls “the most important 36 minutes of their AmQuip career.”

Workers must also attend a course in the Construction Industry Institute's “Making Zero Accidents a Reality” program, which identifies nine areas that contribute to improved safety performance. Typical injuries in the crane-operating industry include those to the joints, knees, back and fingers. But because working with heavy equipment carries with it a serious set of physical risks, it's paramount that all workers understand very clearly what's at stake. Lives could be lost or employees seriously injured.

“We teach and test every employee on why safety and the management of safe production is important for us,” Hammons says. “We believe in zero incidents. We realize that may sound arrogant, but if you don't set challenging goals toward the elimination of loss and more important the protection of people, what are you working to achieve in the first place?”

The results have been a credit to all involved. Excluding one serious injury that occurred four years ago, AmQuip has averaged $46,000 a year in workers' compensation costs since 2009. Its workers' compensation budgets are reduced by 15% each year that the company comes in below its previous budget, which requires employees to perform better and incur fewer costs. “At the end of the day, those are people behind those statistics,” says Hammons.

Despite any company's most comprehensive effort, no organization can account for every individual. Accidents still happen, and in the business of operating cranes, they come with a price.

“I have been doing this for 23 years, and the most serious injury I have been associated with happened in 2010,” he continues. “An oversight in hazard recognition on a simple routine task, and an unfamiliarity with new equipment technology led to an injury we can never forget. As good as we feel we are, as professional as we are, that's a huge eye-opener—and something that can never happen again.”

Return-to-Work Efforts

Injured employees aren't exempt from work. In some cases, Hammons ensures an eight-hour day by delivering training modules and programs to employees' homes. The programs include hazard recognition training, OSHA instruction, service module instruction in schematics, electrical drawings and operator development training. “I'm going to load them up in training that they would normally receive in the next six months,” says Hammons.

In other cases, he sends shuttles to injured workers who are exempt from driving to take them to his office or to AmQuip's training facilities. On job sites, workers with restrictions can perform tasks such as billing, inventory and applying for state dispatch permits to aid in the coordination of transportation.

AmQuip uses the services of panel physicians even if not required by state law. To better understand the physical risks involved in crane operations, panel physicians visit each company facility. The doctors don't just observe tasks like dynamic load testing, for example—they also are brought into the cranes to hoist or swing a load. “We interview, select and train our panel physicians about our industry and its hazards,” Hammons says.

Panel doctors confer with AmQuip's medical director to discuss possible injuries and establish treatment protocols. “If we are doing our job right,” Hammons says, “these panel doctors aren't going to see a lot of our employees for injuries. In return for helping us manage injuries, we send our employees to them for physicals, drug testing and pulmonary function tests.”

Loss expense is charged back to the territory manager's profit and loss statement for accountability. “You can't improve what you don't measure,” says Hammons. “We have threshold limit values and strategic initiatives that are included in supervisor annual performance evaluations. And if you are marginally close toward achieving your financial targets—but your risk management targets are not—you stand the chance that both targets will be missed and accountability features exercised. That motivates managers because they are reviewed on factors from across the board.”

Organization and Carrier Involvement

Hammons sends out monthly and quarterly safety recap reports that detail leading and lagging indicators, workers' compensation costs and frequency trending, which are given to the CEO all the way down to front-line managers for their aid in management of loss in their territory.

The company uses accrued money savings to reward employees with AmQuip apparel, equipment such as cranes, trucks or job-specific tools, and luncheons and dinners that specifically recognize risk management successes. “We want to recognize their achievement and broadcast our brand,” says Hammons.

Carrier participation is a key driver in AmQuip's success in workers' compensation. Hammons spearheads a monthly open claims call with its carriers and discusses claim status updates, suspected fraudulent claims and claims requiring additional treatment protocols. “We recently talked about loss-control activities with one of our carrier's senior management,” he recalls. “They want to keep auditing my facility, but that won't cut it. If they want to give me 50 hours of loss control services with our account, I will take it. However, I will probably expend 100 hours. I want them to pull trends, build training and observation programs that solely focus on what we aren't doing well. I demand that carrier loss control representatives be an extension of our safety department.”

Hammons delivers to its carriers very specific instructions that detail the company's approach to claim administration, handling, settlements and reserves. “We steal, borrow and beg to use all budgets associated with loss-control from our carrier as an extension of our risk management,” he explains. “To a carrier, I'm the biggest pain in their ass.” Not because of their inability to work together, he stresses, but because AmQuip has built a specific culture for management around safety and workers' compensation.

Money acquired from carriers has provided for loss control budgets and been used toward defensive driver training for professional truck drivers, ride-along programs, and a culture perception survey administered to management and labor. Done in tandem with the carrier, supervisors and employees at the labor level were asked the same 40 questions about the foundations of the training program, and their responses were analyzed against each other. The survey is repeated every three years with updated questions. “That is one of the best tools ever developed,” Hammons says. “We had great insight into what our employees and management team thought and realized communication and the task transfer process is where we fell short.

“Workers' comp is not a thing that blows your skirt up,” adds Hammons. “So you have to be creative and try some things out of the box, and really like what you do.”